Cyberstrike, James Barrington [short story to read .TXT] 📗

pink streak running through her otherwise natural black hair – was not only a mathematical genius, but because of her position at GCHQ she could also provide immediate access to a wide range of surveillance data and other secret stuff should the need arise.

‘Agreed,’ Angela Evans said. ‘You’re much too valuable to lose. So what happened to the pilot? Was it a heart attack or a stroke or something? And is he okay now?’

Dave North shook his head.

‘He didn’t make it. He was an Army warrant officer named Bob O’Brien and he died in the medical centre at Brize Norton. It’s that I want to talk to you about. It wasn’t a heart attack or a stroke that knocked him out, and really I’d have been amazed if it had been. All pilots go through regular aircrew medicals to make sure that this kind of thing doesn’t happen, and those medicals are really thorough.’

‘The old idea of an Army medical,’ Morgan interrupted, ‘was that the doctor made you strip off, grabbed your testicles – sorry, ladies – and told you to cough. I’m still not entirely sure what that was supposed to check. But if that bit was okay he’d tell you to stop smoking and cut down on the booze and chips and burgers and then pass you as fit. I’m assuming aircrew are treated rather differently.’

‘Damn right they are,’ North replied. ‘They go through a whole battery of tests and get pulled off flying duties if there’s any serious anomaly, and O’Brien had sailed through his annual medical only a couple of months ago. More to the point, he was given a full autopsy because of what had happened and that revealed no signs at all of heart disease or any other conditions that could have caused his death.’

Morgan looked at him, narrowing his eyes slightly.

‘You didn’t come here just to tell us how you cheated death by doing a barely controlled crash in a chopper,’ he said. ‘They did find something, didn’t they?’

North nodded.

‘I don’t understand the technicalities of it, but their first assumption was that the blood supply to his brain through the carotid artery had been interrupted. Some kind of a stroke, in other words. But that would probably have caused damage to the brain, and they couldn’t find any indication of that. They also couldn’t find any evidence of furring of the arteries or excessive amounts of cholesterol in his blood. And they checked for the presence of plaque in his bloodstream and especially in the coronary arteries, and that result was negative as well, or at least well within safe limits.’

‘But,’ Morgan said.

North nodded.

‘You’re right, Ben. There is a biggish but coming. Because they could find no obvious signs of damage to O’Brien’s veins and arteries, or to his heart, to the transport system if you like, the docs decided to check his blood, the stuff actually flowing through his circulatory system. At that stage, all they knew for certain was that his heart had stopped beating, but they didn’t know why. Again, they did the obvious, like checking for the presence of alcohol or drugs, but he was clear on both counts. SAS personnel are subject to random blood tests anyway, and if there’s any trace of a non-prescribed drug in their system they get RTU’d – returned to unit – immediately, so the result was no surprise. SAS personnel drink booze, often quite a lot of booze, but they don’t take drugs. Everything seemed correct and normal, but they knew something had happened because he was dead, so they decided to do a deeper analysis of the blood samples they’d taken.’

North paused and glanced around the table.

‘I don’t know how much any of you know about human blood but—’

‘Enough to know I don’t particularly like looking at it, especially if it’s my own,’ Angela Evans said.

‘Right. Anyway, blood isn’t just one thing. It isn’t just a thick red liquid. There’s all sorts of different stuff in it, and there’s a process called blood fractionation that allows doctors, or rather laboratory technicians, to separate out the different components because they have different weights. So they spin the blood in a small glass tube in a centrifuge and they end up with three separate components.

‘The largest volume of a sample and the lightest stuff is the blood plasma, which is a clear liquid, and that’s what everything else is suspended in. The heaviest part of the blood is the erythrocytes or red blood cells, so when blood has been fractionated they form a dark red layer at the bottom of the tube. Between the two is what’s called the buffy coat, and I’ve no idea why it’s called that. It’s a—’

‘It’s called the buffy coat because it often looks buff in colour. That’s a kind of light yellowy brown,’ Natasha Black interrupted, and they all turned to look at her. She gave a wide smile and nodded. ‘That’s me,’ she said. ‘I’m a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles, especially where useless information is concerned. I’m a demon at cocktail parties, not that I often get invited. Or not more than once, anyway.’

‘Thanks,’ Morgan said, and nodded at North to carry on.

‘Right. So the buffy coat is a very thin layer made up of a small quantity of white blood cells called leucocytes mixed with platelets. The leucocytes are responsible for fighting disease, intruders and other foreign bodies, and the platelets are what make blood clot if you cut yourself or suffer an injury. Again, nothing looked out of place and the analyses came back negative or within normal limits.’

‘But,’ Morgan said again.

‘But then one of the technicians noticed a sort of discolouration right at the top of the plasma layer. As I said, that’s a clear liquid, but he thought that at the very top there was a slight grey tinge, barely noticeable. Whatever it was, it had to be lighter than the plasma because it was sitting on top of it. He used